The SMC internship doesn’t just bring us bright students, eager to take on original research projects and be part of the SMC and MSRNE community for the summer. It certainly does that. But it also makes us grow – we get blown open every time we welcome such a startling range of people, of topics, of perspectives. We look, of course, for the kind of students who we want to see succeed in our field. But there are a lot of ways to do that. Check out this year’s interns, below.

Also, we want to express our gratitude to everyone who applied. There were, as always, so many amazing applicants who would have also been fascinating and talented additions to the SMC. We wish we could bring in more of you. (Remember, we offer these internships every summer: if you’re an advanced PhD student in the areas of communication, the anthropology or sociology of new media, information science, and related fields, watch this page for when we open next year’s call.)

Anna Banchik is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin interested in digital media cultures, knowledge production, public archives, and social movements. Based on a year-long study of the Human Rights Investigations Lab at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center, her dissertation examines the rise of online open source investigations in human rights fact-finding and advocacy, and assesses its implications for participation, pluralism, and power in the human rights field. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, and P.E.O. International among other institutions, and has been published in Law & Social Inquiry and Gender & Society. At the Social Media Collective, she will research how content removals from social media platforms impact the work of human rights organizations dedicated to collecting, using, and preserving user-generated content depicting conflicts and atrocities.

Jabari Evans is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Media, Technology, and Society program at Northwestern University and works under the direction of Dr. Ellen Wartella in the Center on Media and Human Development. He received his B.A. in Communication and Culture with a minor in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and then went on to earn his MSW from the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work. Prior to Northwestern, Jabari enjoyed a decorated career as a hip hop songwriter and producer performing under the moniker of “Naledge” in the Chicago rap group Kidz in the Hall. Jabari’s research focuses on the music sub-cultures that urban adolescents of color develop and inhabit, collectively and individually, to learn about and understand their social environments, emotional development and professional aspirations. His dissertation focuses on Hip-Hop as pedagogy of practice in the music classroom and how youth digital media programs can increase civic engagement. Most recently, Jabari has founded his nonprofit organization (The Brainiac Project Inc.) to leverage the combination of social media and a burgeoning local hip-hop scene as a means for violence prevention in Chicago’s South Side communities.

Nina Medvedeva is a PhD candidate in the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota and is co-advised by Dr. Aren Aizura and Dr. Miranda Joseph. Her research seeks to understand how different instances of home become normalized while others unravel as contested sites. Using an ethnographic research design consisting of participant observation, interviews, media analysis, GIS spatial analysis, and archival research, her work investigates how the practice of short-term renting on Airbnb affects the labor done in the home, the nature of gentrification in major cities, and grassroots mobilizations around urban governance. She holds a Master of Arts in American Studies from the University of Maryland: College Park.

]]>https://socialmediacollective.org/2019/04/11/2019-smc-summer-interns/feed/0smc_printsocialmediacollectiveThe SMC is hiring a Research Assistant in the New England labhttps://socialmediacollective.org/2019/03/18/the-smc-is-hiring-a-research-assistant-in-the-new-england-lab/
https://socialmediacollective.org/2019/03/18/the-smc-is-hiring-a-research-assistant-in-the-new-england-lab/#commentsMon, 18 Mar 2019 18:56:12 +0000http://socialmediacollective.org/?p=5020Continue reading The SMC is hiring a Research Assistant in the New England lab]]>The Social Media Collective is looking for a Research Assistant to work with us at Microsoft Research New England in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The MSR Social Media Collective in New England currently consists of Nancy Baym, Tarleton Gillespie, Mary L. Gray, and Elena Maris in Cambridge, as well as faculty visitors and Ph.D. interns affiliated with the MSR New England. The RA will take over from current RA Christopher Persaud and will work directly with Nancy Baym, Tarleton Gillespie, and Mary L. Gray.

An appropriate candidate will be a self-starter who is passionate and knowledgeable about the social and cultural implications of technology. Strong skills in writing, organization and academic research are essential, as are time-management and multi-tasking. Minimal qualifications are a BA or equivalent degree in a humanities or social science discipline and some qualitative research training. A Masters degree is preferred but we also consider candidates with Bachelor’s degrees and substantial relevant research experience.

The RA will also have opportunities to collaborate on ongoing projects. While publication is not a guarantee, the RA may have the opportunity to co-author papers while at MSR. The RAship will require 40 hours per week on site in Cambridge, MA. It is a 12 – 18 month contractor position. The position pays hourly with flexible daytime hours. The start date will ideally on or soon before July 1, although flexibility may be possible for the right candidate.

This position is perfect for emerging scholars planning to apply to PhD programs in Communication, Media Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Information Studies, History, Philosophy, STS and Critical Data Studies, and related fields who want to develop their research skills and area expertise before entering a graduate program. Current New England-based MA/PhD students are welcome to apply provided they can commit to 40 hours of on-site work per week.

To apply, please send an email to Nancy Baym (baym@microsoft.com) with the subject “RA Application” and include the following attachments:

– One-page (single-spaced) personal statement, including a description of research experience and training, interests, and professional goals
– CV or resume
– Writing sample (preferably a literature review or a scholarly-styled article)
– Links to public online presence (e.g., blog, homepage, Twitter, journalistic endeavors, etc.)
– The names and email addresses of two recommenders

Be sure to include your last name in file names of all documents you attach.

We will begin reviewing applications on April 15. We hope to make a hiring decision no later than early May.

We regret that because this is a time-limited contract position, we can only consider candidates who are already legally authorized to work in the United States.

Please feel free to ask questions about the position in the blog comments.

]]>https://socialmediacollective.org/2019/03/18/the-smc-is-hiring-a-research-assistant-in-the-new-england-lab/feed/3nancybaymNow hiring: Research Assistant position at Microsoft Research Cambridge (UK)https://socialmediacollective.org/2019/03/12/now-hiring-research-assistant-position-at-microsoft-research-cambridge-uk/
https://socialmediacollective.org/2019/03/12/now-hiring-research-assistant-position-at-microsoft-research-cambridge-uk/#respondTue, 12 Mar 2019 14:57:30 +0000http://socialmediacollective.org/?p=5016Continue reading Now hiring: Research Assistant position at Microsoft Research Cambridge (UK)]]>Check out this great opportunity to work with our colleague Sean Rintel in the MSR UK lab!

…

The Human Experience & Design group is seeking a Research Assistant to support work on communication technology projects, with a focus on video-mediated communication. This is a 12-month full-time position on-site in Cambridge, UK.

This is an exciting opportunity to develop experience in corporate research and the intersection of academic, company, and customer impact. You should be a self-starter with a passion for exploring the social aspects of communication technology design and use. You will contribute to background, data collection, and management of ongoing cross-organisational projects and potentially the development of new projects. While publication is not guaranteed, co-authorship may be possible.

Qualifications

· Bachelors, Masters (preferred), or PhD in HCI, Communication, Information Studies or a related social science or humanities field (e.g. Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Media Studies). Applicants who are PhD graduates should note that the RA position is primarily aimed at existing research support rather than developing a personal trajectory of research

· Experience or interest working on the social aspects of communication technology, especially video-mediated communication

· Strong skills in academic research

· Strong skills in organisation, time-management, and collaborative work

· Strong spoken and written English

· Work authorization is required

This position would suit applicants with varying goals. It might suit emerging scholars planning to apply to technology-oriented PhD programs who want to develop their research skills and area expertise before entering a graduate program. It might also suit graduates at any level who are considering a career in user experience and technology development.

Applications must include the following:

· Curriculum Vitae

· One-page personal statement, including a description of research experience and training, interests, and professional goals

We will begin reviewing applications immediately and the position will remain open until filled.

To ask any questions about this position, please email to Sean Rintel (serintel@microsoft.com).

]]>https://socialmediacollective.org/2019/03/12/now-hiring-research-assistant-position-at-microsoft-research-cambridge-uk/feed/0socialmediacollectiveMSRNE is seeking postdocs… social media scholars are encouraged to apply!https://socialmediacollective.org/2018/11/20/msrne-is-seeking-postdocs-social-media-scholars-are-encouraged-to-apply/
https://socialmediacollective.org/2018/11/20/msrne-is-seeking-postdocs-social-media-scholars-are-encouraged-to-apply/#respondTue, 20 Nov 2018 20:00:08 +0000http://socialmediacollective.org/?p=5011Continue reading MSRNE is seeking postdocs… social media scholars are encouraged to apply!]]>This year our Microsoft Research, New England lab is seeking to fill an open postdoctoral line – for which social media candidates are eligible. We strongly encourage applicants with expertise that complements those of the Social Media Collective, and that bridges between our interests and other areas of our lab (economics, ICT4D, machine learning and statistics, cryptography, algorithmic game theory, bioinfomatics). We would be extremely happy to see a stellar junior SMC scholar rise to the top of this candidate pool! This is a particularly exciting position, as it is designed to recognize applicants who can demonstrate interdisciplinary connections to other areas of the MSRNE lab. So, please forward this to students and colleagues who you think might be interested, and of interest.

An application must include (a) your CV, (b) research statement (4pg max, including a 1pg outline of your dissertation), (c) names of three people willing to provide letters of recommendation, and (d) two publications / writing samples. If you have questions about this position or about the application process, please feel free to email Nancy Baym and include “SMC / General Postdoc call” in the subject heading.

Microsoft Research New England (MSRNE) is looking for advanced PhD students to join the Social Media Collective (SMC) for its 12-week Internship program. The Social Media Collective (in New England, we are Nancy Baym, Tarleton Gillespie, and Mary Gray, with current postdoc Elena Maris) bring together empirical and critical perspectives to understand the political and cultural dynamics that underpin social media technologies. Learn more about us here.

The Social Media Collective (SMC) is a network of social science and humanistic researchers, part of the Microsoft Research labs in New England and New York. It includes full-time researchers, postdocs, interns, and visitors. Our primary purpose is to provide rich contextual understanding into the social and cultural dynamics that underpin social media technologies. Our work spans several disciplines: anthropology, communication, economics, information, law, media studies, women’s studies, science & technology studies, and sociology.

The Social Media Collective is comprised of full-time researchers, postdocs, visiting faculty, Ph.D. interns, and research assistants. Current projects in New England include:

How does the use of social media affect relationships between artists and audiences in creative industries, and what does that tell us about the future of work? (Nancy Baym)

How are social media platforms, through their algorithmic design and user policies, taking up the role of custodians of public discourse? (Tarleton Gillespie)

What are the cultural, political, and economic implications of crowdsourcing as a new form of semi-automated, globally-distributed digital labor? (Mary L. Gray)

• How and why do industries seek out qualitative understandings of users, technology, big data, metrics and analytics, and who does this kind of ‘soft data’ work? (Elena Maris)

The ideal candidate may be trained in any number of disciplines (including anthropology, communication, information studies, media studies, sociology, science and technology studies, or a related field), but should have a strong social scientific or humanistic methodological, analytical, and theoretical foundation, be interested in questions related to media or communication technologies and society or culture, and be interested in working in a highly interdisciplinary environment that includes computer scientists, mathematicians, and economists.

Primary mentors for this year will be Nancy Baym, Mary L. Gray, and Tarleton Gillespie, with additional guidance offered by other members of the SMC. We are looking for applicants working in one or more of the following areas:

Personal relationships and digital media

Audiences and the shifting landscapes of producer/consumer relations

Affective, immaterial, and other frameworks for understanding digital labor

How platforms, through their design and policies, shape public discourse

The politics of algorithms, metrics, and big data for a computational culture

The political economies of on-demand labor

The difference between traditional cooperatively-managed markets and Commons and online platform cooperatives

The ethics of dataset creation and uses of large-scale social data for qualitative research

Interns are also expected to give short presentations on their project, contribute to the SMC blog, attend the weekly lab colloquia, and contribute to the life of the community through weekly lunches with fellow PhD interns and the broader lab community. There are also natural opportunities for collaboration with SMC researchers and visitors, and with others currently working at MSRNE, including computer scientists, economists, and mathematicians. PhD interns are expected to be on-site for the duration of their internship.

Some of the compensation and benefits of this position include:

highly competitive salary

travel to/from internship location from your university location (including the intern and all eligible dependents)

housing costs: interns can select one of two housing options

fully furnished corporate housing covered by Microsoft, or

a lump sum for finding and securing your own housing

local transportation allowance for commuting

health insurance is not provided; most interns stay covered under their university insurance, but interns are eligible to enroll in a Microsoft sponsored medical plan

Applicants must have advanced to candidacy in their PhD program by the time they start their internship. (Unfortunately, there are no opportunities for Master’s students or early PhD students at this time). Applicants from historically marginalized communities, underrepresented in higher education, and students from universities outside of the United States are encouraged to apply.

Your application needs to include:

A short description (no more than 2 pages, single spaced) of 1 or 2 projects that you propose to do while interning at MSRNE, independently and/or in collaboration with current SMC researchers. The project proposals can be related to, but must be distinct from your dissertation research. Be specific and tell us:

What is the research question animating your proposed project?

What methods would you use to address your question?

How does your research question speak to the interests of the SMC?

Who do you hope to reach (who are you engaging) with this proposed research?

A brief description of your dissertation project(no more than 1 page, single spaced).

An academic article-length manuscript (~7,000 or more) that you have authored or co-authored (published or unpublished) that demonstrates your writing skills.

A copy of your CV.

if available, pointers to your website or other online presence (this is not required).

In addition to those qualifications, you’ll need submit the names of three reference letter for this position (one must be your dissertation advisor). After you submit your application, a request for letters may be sent to your list of references on your behalf. Note that reference letters cannot be requested until after you have submitted your application, and furthermore, that they might not be automatically requested for all candidates. You may wish to alert your letter writers in advance, so they will be ready to submit your letter.

If you have any questions about the application process, please contact Tarleton Gillespie at tarleton@microsoft.com and include “SMC PhD Internship” in the subject line.

TIMELINE

Due to the volume of applications, late submissions (including submissions with late letters of reference) will not be considered. We will not be able to provide specific feedback on individual applications. Finalists will be contacted in February to arrange a Skype interview. Applicants chosen for the internship will be informed in March and announced on the socialmediacollective.org blog.

PREVIOUS INTERN TESTIMONIALS

“The Microsoft Internship is a life-changing experience. The program offers structure and space for emerging scholars to find their own voice while also engaging in interdisciplinary conversations. For social scientists especially the exposure to various forms of thinking, measuring, and problem-solving is unparalleled. I continue to call on the relationships I made at MSRE and always make space to talk to a former or current intern. Those kinds of relationships have a long tail.” — Tressie McMillan Cottom, Sociology, Virginia Commonwealth University

“My internship experience at MSRNE was eye-opening, mind-expanding and happy-making. If you are looking to level up as a scholar – reach new depth in your focus area, while broadening your scope in directions you would never dream up on your own; and you’d like to do that with the brightest, most inspiring and supportive group of scholars and humans – then you definitely want to apply.” — Kat Tiidenberg, Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark

“Coming right after the exhausting, enriching ordeal of general/qualifying exams, it was exactly what I needed to step back, plunge my hands into a research project, and set the stage for my dissertation… PhD interns are given substantial intellectual freedom to pursue the questions they care about. As a consequence, the onus is mostly on the intern to develop their research project, justify it to their mentors, and do the work. While my mentors asked me good, supportive, and often helpfully hard, critical questions, but my relationship with them was not the relationship of an RA to a PI– instead it was the relationship of a junior colleague to senior ones.” — J. Nathan Matias, Psychology, Princeton University (read more here)

“My summer at Microsoft Research with the Social Media Collective was nothing short of transformative. My theoretical and methodological horizons broadened, and the relationships I forged continue to shape my development as a scholar.” — Shannon MacGregor, Communication, University of Utah

“It might be hard to believe that a twelve-week internship could be so integral to your professional and personal growth, but that’s exactly how I felt at that end of my time at MSRNE. I learned more about writing, critical thinking, public speaking, collegiality, and self-belief than I thought possible within such a short space of time, and I gained a group of forever friends and mentors in the process. The internship also provides you with a rare opportunity to work in a truly interdisciplinary environment and allows you to take your research proposal in a direction you might not have planned for. MSRNE was, and will continue to be, the perfect intellectual home for me.” — Ysabel Gerrard, Digital Media and Society, University of Sheffield, UK

“The internship at Microsoft Research was all of the things I wanted it to be – personally productive, intellectually rich, quiet enough to focus, noisy enough to avoid complete hermit-like cave dwelling behavior, and full of opportunities to begin ongoing professional relationships with other scholars who I might not have run into elsewhere.” — Laura Noren, Center for Data Science, New York University

“If I could design my own graduate school experience, it would feel a lot like my summer at Microsoft Research. I had the chance to undertake a project that I’d wanted to do for a long time, surrounded by really supportive and engaging thinkers who could provide guidance on things to read and concepts to consider, but who could also provoke interesting questions on the ethics of ethnographic work or the complexities of building an identity as a social sciences researcher. Overall, it was a terrific experience for me as a researcher as well as a thinker.” — Jessica Lingel, Communication, University of Pennsylvania

“The Social Media Collective was instrumental throughout the process in giving me timely, sharp, and helpful feedback for my research project. These conversations further inspired new thinking that has shaped for my overall research agenda. I also felt supported by the process at Microsoft Research, to take on what may seem intimidating, especially for social science and humanities students: tackling a research project in 12 short weeks. Socially, the Social Media Collective and other interns at Microsoft Research New England were all amazingly nice and fun people, with whom I made great memories. Overall, the internship was an invaluable experience for my intellectual and professional development.”— Penny Trieu, Information, University of Michigan

“There are four main reasons why I consider the summer I spent as an intern with the Social Media Collective to be a formative experience in my career. 1. was the opportunity to work one-on-one with the senior scholars on my own project, and the chance to see “behind the scenes” on how they approach their own work. 2. The environment created by the SMC is one of openness and kindness, where scholars encourage and help each other do their best work. 3. hearing from the interdisciplinary members of the larger MSR community, and presenting work to them, required learning how to engage people in other fields. And finally, 4. the lasting effect: Between senior scholars and fellow interns, you become a part of a community of researchers and create friendships that extend well beyond the period of your internship.” — Stacy Blasiola, Facebook UX Research

“This internship provided me with the opportunity to challenge myself beyond what I thought was possible within three months. With the SMC’s guidance, support, and encouragement, I was able to reflect deeply about my work while also exploring broader research possibilities by learning about the SMC’s diverse projects and exchanging ideas with visiting scholars. This experience will shape my research career and, indeed, my life for years to come.” — Stefanie Duguay, Communication Studies, Concordia University, Canada

“My internship with Microsoft Research was a crash course in what a thriving academic career looks like. The weekly meetings with the research group provided structure and accountability, the stream of interdisciplinary lectures sparked intellectual stimulation, and the social activities built community. I forged relationships with peers and mentors that I would never have met in my graduate training.” — Kate Zyskowski, Facebook UX Research

“It has been an extraordinary experience for me to be an intern at Social Media Collective. Coming from a computer science background, communicating and collaborating with so many renowned social science and media scholars teaches me, as a researcher and designer of socio-technical systems, to always think of these systems in their cultural, political and economic context and consider the ethical and policy challenges they raise. Being surrounded by these smart, open and insightful people who are always willing to discuss with me when I met problems in the project, provide unique perspectives to think through the problems and share the excitements when I got promising results is simply fascinating. And being able to conduct a mixed-method research that combines qualitative insights with quantitative methodology makes the internship just the kind of research experience that I have dreamed for.” — Ming Yin, Computer Science, Purdue University

“Spending the summer as an intern at MSR was an extremely rewarding learning experience. Having the opportunity to develop and work on your own projects as well as collaborate and workshop ideas with prestigious and extremely talented researchers was invaluable. It was amazing how all of the members of the Social Media Collective came together to create this motivating environment that was open, supportive, and collaborative. Being able to observe how renowned researchers streamline ideas, develop projects, conduct research, and manage the writing process was a uniquely helpful experience – and not only being able to observe and ask questions, but to contribute to some of these stages was amazing and unexpected.” — Germaine Halegoua, Film & Media Studies, University of Kansas

“Not only was I able to work with so many smart people, but the thoughtfulness and care they took when they engaged with my research can’t be stressed enough. The ability to truly listen to someone is so important. You have these researchers doing multiple, fascinating projects, but they still make time to help out interns in whatever way they can. I always felt I had everyone’s attention when I spoke about my project or other issues I had, and everyone was always willing to discuss any questions I had, or even if I just wanted clarification on a comment someone had made at an earlier point. Another favorite aspect of mine was learning about other interns’ projects and connecting with people outside my discipline.” — Jolie Matthews, Learning Sciences, Northwestern University

]]>https://socialmediacollective.org/2018/11/08/2019-smc-summer-internships/feed/0socialmediacollectivesmc_printPlaying to the NYC Crowd and other SMC outingshttps://socialmediacollective.org/2018/09/25/playing-to-the-nyc-crowd/
https://socialmediacollective.org/2018/09/25/playing-to-the-nyc-crowd/#respondTue, 25 Sep 2018 18:13:28 +0000http://socialmediacollective.org/?p=4968Continue reading Playing to the NYC Crowd and other SMC outings]]>As I hope you’ve heard by now, the SMC is publishing books like mad. Tarleton Gillespie’s Custodians of the Internet is blazing a trail through the content moderation debate, Mary Gray and Sid Suri’s Ghost Work will be out in May, and my own Playing to the Crowd has hit the road seeking readers.

In that vein, here are some upcoming public events where I will be talking about my book in NYC and its environs:

Monday October 1 @ 3-4 pm: A small book session for people who have read the book (pre-registration required) at Data & Society

There will be a few more talks coming up elsewhere (University of Illinois Chicago 11/29, University of Michigan 12/4, London in January, Oslo in February). If you’re interested in inviting me to talk with your folks, shoot me an email.

Elena Maris, University of Pennsylvania

Elena received her Ph.D. in Communication from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research examines the ways media/tech industries and audiences work to influence each other, with a focus on their technological tactics and the roles of gender and sexuality in their interactions. She also studies how identity is represented and experienced in popular culture and online. Her dissertation explored how online audience groups construct media industries and opportunities for influencing media content, a concept she called the “imagined industry.” Elena returns to MSRNE after interning with the SMC in 2017, and will continue working on the project she began then, on industries’ use of metrics to measure fandom. She is also starting a new project about the increased demand for qualitative understandings of technology, big data, metrics and analytics in the tech industries, and the gendering of such ‘soft’ data work. Elena’s work has been published in Critical Studies in Media Communication, the European Journal of Cultural Studies, and Feminist Media Studies.

It’s of course hard to celebrate the choice of one, when we also had to say no to so many superb candidates. We are so honored and humbled by the quality and range of scholars who want to come work with us, and offer our best wishes to those we couldn’t bring in as well.

]]>https://socialmediacollective.org/2018/08/15/welcome-our-new-smc-postdoc-elena-maris/feed/0socialmediacollectivemarisread an excerpt from Mike Ananny’s new book, Networked Press Freedomhttps://socialmediacollective.org/2018/07/09/networked-press-freedom/
https://socialmediacollective.org/2018/07/09/networked-press-freedom/#respondMon, 09 Jul 2018 18:25:52 +0000http://socialmediacollective.org/?p=4960Continue reading read an excerpt from Mike Ananny’s new book, Networked Press Freedom]]>In my new book Networked Press Freedom: Creating Infrastructures for a Public Right to Hear [MIT Press | Amazon] I critically examine what press freedom means today. I argue that, as news production, circulation, and interpretation are increasingly distributed across a new and unstable set of humans and nonhumans—from journalists and algorithms to platform designers and bots—it is increasingly difficult to say exactly what press freedom means. What is the press trying to be free from? To what ends and for which versions of the public? How do we recognize a free versus an unfree press?

I define networked press freedom as a system of separations and dependencies among humans and nonhumans that helps to ensure not only journalists’ right to speak but publics’ rights to hear. Engaging with a wide range of literature and analyzing a 7-year corpus of digital news examples, I argue that the networked press earns its freedom to the extent that it creates defensible publics. Instead of only seeing press freedom as journalists’ right to pursue their visions of the public free from governments, markets, and technologies, the book tells a nuanced and historically grounded story that helps readers ask: what kind of public, what kind of freedom, and what kind of press? Below is an excerpt. (This excerpt was first posted at the Nieman Lab.)

What, exactly, is press freedom, and why does it matter? In the popular discourse of the United States, we do not ask this question very often or very deeply. The answers are obvious and almost cliché: the public has a right to know, journalists are the people’s watchdogs, they afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, democracy dies in darkness, and voters need objective information to be good citizens. Popular histories of modern U.S. journalism celebrate heroes who spoke truth to power and brought down institutions—Ida B. Wells, Nellie Bly, Ida Tarbell, Edward R. Murrow, I. F. Stone, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Walter Cronkite. They often are remembered as most effective when they were left alone to pursue their visions of what they thought the public needed. These virtuous, creative, public-spirited, hard-working storytellers occupy powerful positions within the modern mythology of press freedom. If we just get out of the way of good journalists and let them tell truth to power, they will produce the information that vibrant democracies need.

This myth is somewhat true, and these heroes were indeed expert storytellers who challenged each era’s norms. But when we think about press freedom only or even mostly as the freedom of journalists from constraints, it becomes a narrow and almost magical phenomenon that depends on individuals and heroism. It says that journalists already know what the public needs, and just need freedom from the state, marketplaces, and audiences to pursue self-evident things like truth and the public interest. These brave journalists and publishers show their commitment to the public and the power of their independence by going to court and sometimes jail to protect sources and fight censorship. If journalists and publishers can get truth to the public, then individual readers and viewers will be able to make informed decisions about how to think and vote. Ultimately, the press wants to be left alone so that you can be left alone. The kind of democracy that dominates this common image of press freedom relies on a lot of independences—a lot of freedoms from.

This book tries to challenge this mythology. I want to complicate the idea of press freedom and show that it emerges not from individual heroes but from social, technological, institutional, and normative forces that vie for power, imagine publics, and implicitly fight for visions of democracy. I see press freedom as a concept to think with—a generative and constructive tool for looking at any given era of the press and public life and asking, “Is this version of press freedom giving us the kind of publics we need? If not, how do we revise the institutional arrangements underpinning press freedom and make a different thing that we agree to call ‘the press’?” Alternatively, how do we adjust our normative expectations about what publics should be, creating a different image of freedom that we then might demand from institutions that make up the press? If we see press freedom not as heroic isolations—journalists breaking free to tell truths to the publics they imagine—but as a subtler system of separations and dependencies that make publics, then we might see each era’s types of press freedom as bellwethers for particular visions of the public. Ideas of press freedom become evidence of thinking about publics. Rethinking press freedom can be a way to see how press power flows, a prompt to ask which flows produce which publics, and a challenge: what types of news, publics, or presses are we not seeing because our vision of press freedom is so narrow?

If you think press freedom is a particular thing, you will likely look for that thing when you want to see whether a democracy is healthy or whether journalists are doing their jobs. Assumptions about press freedom can shut down conversations about the press and democracy: “We have a free press, so the election result is what it should be” or “We have a free press, and corruption is still rampant!” or “If we had a free press, then we’d have a different government” or “A free marketplace is a free press because truth comes from competing viewpoints.” Statements like these—coming from journalists, audiences, politicians, advertisers, publishers—assume that we already know what we mean by a free press and that our problem is just implementing it.

But if we can liberate the idea of press freedom from these assumptions and assumptions that equate it with whatever journalists say publics need, then press freedom becomes a generative and expansive tool—a way to think about publics, self-governance, and democracy. Because, as Edwin Baker puts it, different democracies need different media, we can complicate democracy by thinking more creatively about press freedom.

Given this moment, when media systems are in a fundamental flux, this book offers a way to think about press freedom as sociotechnical forces with separations and dependencies that help to make publics. I aim to engage with and use this moment of fundamental change to show what press freedom could mean. Contrary to the dominant historical myth in the United States, I argue that press freedom should not be seen simply as journalists’ freedom to write and publish. Rather, press freedom is a normative and institutional product of any given era: it is what people think press freedom should mean and how people have arranged people and power to achieve that vision.

Most simply, press freedom is the right and responsibility to create separations and dependencies that enable democratic self-governance. It is the power and obligation to know and defend the publics that its separations and dependences create. Today these separations and dependencies live in distributed, technological infrastructures with new actors and often invisible forces, so for the networked press to claim its autonomy, it needs to show how and why it arranges people and machines in particular ways. It needs to understand how its humans and nonhumans align or clash to create some publics but not others. It needs to be able to defend why it creates such meetings, and when necessary for a particular image of the public, it needs to develop new types of sociotechnical power that let it make new types of publics.

Rather than abandoning or collapsing the idea of press freedom—seeing it as naive or anachronistic—my aim is to revive and redeploy it. I trace the idea of press freedom through theories of democratic self-governance, situate it within the press’s institutional history, argue that each era of sociotechnical change creates a particular meaning of press freedom, and ask how the contemporary, networked press might claim its freedom and make new publics. Instead of being seen as a holdover from a time that no longer exists, press freedom could be viewed as a powerful framework for arguing why and how the networked press could change.

Interspersed with this tour of institutional forces, I try to deploy my framework and use this new notion of press freedom to argue for a particular normative value—a public right to hear. I claim that the dominant, historical, professionalized image of press freedom—as whatever journalists say they need to be free from to pursue self-evident public interest—privileges an individual right to speak over a public right to hear. It confuses journalists’ freedom to publish with publics’ rights to hear what they need to hear in order to sustain themselves as publics—to realize the inextricably shared conditions under which they live, discover and debate their similarities and differences, devise solutions to predicaments, insulate themselves from harmful forces and nurture contrarian viewpoints, recognize the resources that hold them together, and reinvent themselves through means other than the rational, informational models of citizenship that dominate the traditional mythology of U.S. press freedom. For publics to be anything other than what unconstrained journalists imagine them to be, press freedom can be defensible only if it can be shown that the press’s institutional arrangements produce expansive, dynamic, diverse publics.

In an era when many assumptions about communication and information are being reconsidered, it is difficult to say exactly what journalists can or should be free from. A better question to ask might be, “How is the networked press—journalists, software engineers, algorithms, relational databases, social media platforms, and quantified audiences—creating separations and dependencies that enable a public right to hear, make some publics more likely than others, and move beyond an image of the public as whatever journalists assume it to be?”

Three stories can help illustrate the phenomenon. First, in September 2008, high in Google News’s list of results for a search on “United Airlines” was a story in the South Florida Sun Sentinel on United’s recent bankruptcy filing. The story detailed how United had lost significant revenue, could not meet market forecasts, and needed protection from creditors and time to restructure. A Miami investment adviser responsible for publishing news alerts through Bloomberg News Service saw the story and added it to Bloomberg’s newsletter; United’s stock dropped 75 percent in one day before trading was halted. Unfortunately for United, the Sentinel’s website displayed the current date (2008) at the top of its page; it did not include the story’s original date of publication (2002). Google’s Web crawler mistook the old story for a current story, creating a perfect storm of misinformation: the Sentinel displayed dates in a confusing manner; Google’s crawler read the only date it saw and made an assumption; the investment adviser assumed that Google highly ranked recent information; Bloomberg subscribers and high-frequency traders assumed that the newsletter contained timely and actionable information; and the stock market assumed that its behavior was rational and based on true information. This is a story of networked press freedom because although the Sentinel may have tipped the first domino, the failure is the fault of no single actor. A sociotechnical failure of data, algorithms, individuals, and institutions together led to the creation of false news that drove action.

Second, in 2008, the Pocono Record published an online story about Brenda Enterline’s sexual harassment lawsuit against Pocono Medical Center. In comments left by readers under the story, several people anonymously said that they had personal knowledge of incidents relevant to the lawsuit. When Enterline’s attorneys subpoenaed the newspaper for access to the commenters, the paper refused, claiming that it had a right and obligation to protect the commenters’ First Amendment rights to anonymity. The Pennsylvania district court agreed, essentially extending a de facto shield law around the Pocono Record’s reporters and commenters. In contrast, also in September 2008, a grand jury in Illinois successfully subpoenaed the Alton Telegraph for the names, home addresses, and IP addresses of anonymous commenters who left responses to an online story the paper had run about a murder investigation. The paper argued that “the Illinois reporter’s shield law protects the identities of the anonymous commenters as ‘sources,’” but the court disagreed, saying that such a shield covers only reporters and not commenters. Such cases have continued, with an Idaho judge ruling in 2012 that the Spokesman-Review had to reveal the identity of an anonymous commenter accused of libel, and a 2014 U.S. federal court ruling that the NOLA Media Group had to reveal names, addresses, and phone numbers of its anonymous commenters. Even though the First Amendment protects Americans’ right to speak anonymously and several states have shield laws designed to protect newspapers from releasing information against their will (Digital Media Law Project, 2013), it is unclear exactly where newspapers stop and audiences begin. The press may sometimes be free from compelled testimony, but there is little clarity on what exactly the press is and therefore who can claim its freedoms.

Finally, in 2016, Norwegian writer Tom Egeland posted to his Facebook account a story that included Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize–winning photo of Vietnamese children running away from a U.S. military napalm attack. One nine-year-old victim was a naked girl. Facebook removed the post because it contained “fully nude genitalia” and “fully nude female breast,” in violation of the company’s community standards. When Egeland appealed the removal, his account was suspended. The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten then posted the image and a story on the censorship to its company’s Facebook site—and its post also was censored. The leader of Norway’s conservative party then posted the image and a protest against the censorship—and her post was censored. Facebook initially defended its decisions saying that although it recognized the photo’s iconic status, “it’s difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others.” It relented only after the Norwegian prime minister also posted the image with her own protest. Facebook eventually stated: “Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image”.

This is a story of networked press freedom. A Facebook user posts an image that has been recognized with one of journalism’s highest awards. It triggers a review by Facebook’s vast content-moderation operation tasked with policing millions of pieces of media in near real time. The user is suspended for appealing the decision. The incident attracts the attention of a news organization, political elites, and worldwide audiences. Eventually, Facebook relents after deciding for itself that the image is iconic, historically important, and worthy of sharing. In this incident, the journalist’s right to publish and the public right to hear are not housed within any one organization or profession. They instead are distributed across an image with agreed-on historical significance, platform algorithms surfacing content, social media companies with proprietary community standards, vast populations of piecework censors implementing standards quickly, editorial protests of professional journalists and elite politicians, and an eventual reversal by a private corporation only after it thinks that an image should be shared. Here, press autonomy is not just the freedom of Nick Ut, Tom Egeland, or the Aftenposten to publish. It is the product of a network of humans and nonhumans that make it more or less likely that a public will encounter media and debate its meaning and significance.

There are many more such stories. This book is about putting them in context—to show how these seemingly idiosyncratic incidents are indicative of the larger challenge of figuring out what democratic self-governance requires, what kind of free press should help to secure it, and how such freedom is distributed across a network of humans and machines that together create publics. If nothing else, my hope is that readers will take away from this book both a skepticism about the idea of press freedom and a sense of its promise as a tool for interrogating the networked press. If someone says “We need a free press,” my hope is that this book will nudge you to ask, “What kind of freedom, what kind of press, and for what kind of public?” Inspired by Michael Schudson’s question “autonomy from what?,” I try to ask “autonomy of what and for what?”

My aim in this book is not to dismiss earlier theories of press freedom but to argue that they tell only part of the story. That the press is a product of multiple forces and many different kinds of power is nothing new. But if we want to understand the networked press’s potential to create new publics, we might use the idea of networked press freedom as a kind of diagnostic. If we do not like the publics the networked press creates, we should examine its infrastructure and make changes. If we do not like the networked press’s infrastructure, we need to show why it leads to unacceptable publics. If a new element of the networked press appears, we need to be able to say quickly and thoughtfully what its relationships are and how they create new publics. And if we have an idea for a new element that we think should be part of the networked press, we must be able to say why we need the new public it might help create.

I’m thrilled to say that my new book, Custodians of the Internet, is now available for purchase from Yale University Press, and your favorite book retailer. Those of you who know me know that I’ve been working on this book for a long time, and have cared about the issues it addresses for a while now. So I’m particularly excited that it is now no longer mine, but yours if you want it. I hope it’ll be of some value to those of you who are interested in interrogating and transforming the information landscape in which we find ourselves.

By way of introduction, I thought I would explain the book’s title, particularly my choice of the word “custodians.” This title came unnervingly late in the writing process, and after many, many conversations with my extremely patient friend and colleague Dylan Mulvin. “Custodians of the Internet” captured, better than many, many alternatives, the aspirations of social media platforms, the position they find themselves in, and my notion for how they should move forward.

moderators are the web’s “custodians,” quietly cleaning up the mess: The book begins with a quote from one of my earliest interviews, with a member of YouTube’s content policy team. As they put it, “In the ideal world, I think that our job in terms of a moderating function would be really to be able to just turn the lights on and off and sweep the floors . . . but there are always the edge cases, that are gray.” The image invoked is a custodian in the janitorial sense, doing the simple, mundane, and uncontroversial task of sweeping the floors. In this turn of phrase, content moderation was offered up as simple maintenance. It is not imagined to be difficult to know what needs scrubbing, and the process is routine. As with content moderation, there is labor involved, but largely invisible, just as actual janitorial staff are often instructed to “disappear,” working at night or with as little intrusion as possible. yet even then, years before Gamergate or ISIS beheadings or white nationalists or fake news, it was clear that moderation is not so simple.

platforms have taken “custody” of the Internet: Content moderation at the major platforms matters because those platforms have achieved such prominence in the intervening years.As I was writing the book, one news item in 2015 stuck with me: in a survey on people’s new media use, more people said that they used Facebook than said they used the Internet. Facebook, which by then had become one of the most popular online destinations in the world and had expanded to the mobile environment, did not “seem” like the Internet anymore. Rather than being part of the Internet, it had somehow surpassed it. This was not true, of course; Facebook and the other major platforms had in fact woven themselves deeper into the Internet, by distributing cookies, offering secure login mechanisms for other sites and platforms, expanding advertising networks, collecting reams of user data from third-party sites, and even exploring Internet architecture projects. In both the perception of users and in material ways, Facebook and the major social media platforms have taken “custody” of the Internet. This should change our calculus as to whether platform moderation is or is not “censorship,” and the responsibilities of platforms bear when they decide what to remove and who to exclude.

platforms should be better “custodians,” committed guardians of our struggles over value: In the book, I propose that these responsibilities have expanded. Users have become more acutely aware, of both the harms they encounter on these platforms, and the costs of being wronged by content moderation decisions. What’s more, social media platforms have become the place where a variety of speech coalitions do battle: activists, trolls, white nationalists, advertisers, abusers, even the President. And the implications of content moderation have expanded, from individual concerns to public ones. If a platform fails to moderate, everyone can be affected, even those who aren’t party to the circulation of the offensive, the fraudulent, or the hateful — even those who aren’t on social media at all.

What would it mean for platforms to play host not just to our content, but to our best intentions? The major platforms I discuss here have, for years, tried to position themselves as open and impartial conduits of information, defenders of their user’s right to speak, and legally shielded from any obligations for how they police their sites. As most platform managers see it, moderation should be theirs to do, conducted on their own terms, on our behalf, and behind the scenes. But that arrangement is crumbling, as critics begin to examine the responsibilities social media platforms have to the public they serve.

In the book, I propose that platforms become “custodians” of the public discourse they facilitate — not in the janitorial sense, but something more akin to legal guardianship. The custodian, given charge over a property, a company, a person, or a valuable resource, does not take it for their own or impose their will over it; they accept responsibility for ensuring that it is governed properly. This is akin to Jack Balkin’s suggestion that platforms act as “information fiduciaries,” with a greater obligation to protect our data. But I don’t just mean that platforms should be custodians of our content; platforms should be custodians of the deliberative process we all must engage in, that makes us a functioning public. Users need to be more accountable for making the hard decisions about what does and does not belong; platforms could facilitate that deliberation, and then faithfully enact the conclusions users reach. Safeguarding public discourse requires ensuring that it is governed by those to whom it belongs, making sure it survives, that its value is sustained in a fair and equitable way. Platforms could be not the police of our reckless chatter, but the trusted agents of our own interest in forming more democratic publics.

If you end up reading the book, you have my gratitude. And I’m eager to hear from anyone who has thoughts, comments, praise, criticism, and suggestions. You can find me on Twitter at @TarletonG.

]]>https://socialmediacollective.org/2018/06/06/custodians/feed/1tarletonNight modes and the new hue of our screenshttps://socialmediacollective.org/2018/05/04/night-modes-and-the-new-hue-of-our-screens/
https://socialmediacollective.org/2018/05/04/night-modes-and-the-new-hue-of-our-screens/#respondFri, 04 May 2018 15:36:17 +0000http://socialmediacollective.org/?p=4905Continue reading Night modes and the new hue of our screens]]>

Information & Culture just published (paywall; or free pre-print) an article I wrote about “night modes,” in which I try to untangle the history of light, screens, sleep loss, and circadian research. If we navigate our lives enmeshed with technologies and their attendant harms, I wanted to know how we make sense of our orientation to the things that prevent harm. To think, in other words, of the constellation of people and things that are meant to ward off, prevent, stave off, or otherwise mitigate the endemic effects of using technology.

If you’re not familiar with “night modes”: in recent years, hardware manufacturers and software companies have introduced new device modes that shift the color temperature of screens during evening hours. To put it another way: your phone turns orange at night now. Perhaps you already use f.lux, or Apple’s “Night Shift,” or “Twilight” for Android.

All of these software interventions come as responses to the belief that untimely light exposure closer to bedtime will result in less sleep or a less restful sleep. Research into human circadian rhythms has had a powerful influence on how we think and talk about healthy technology use. And recent discoveries in the human response to light, as you’ll learn in the article, are based on a tiny subset of blind persons who lack rods and cones. As such, it’s part of a longer history of using research on persons with disabilities to shape and optimize communication technologies – a historical pattern that the media and disability studies scholar, Mara Mills, has documented throughout her career.

For decades, shift workers were seen as those most vulnerable to untimely light exposure but today everyone is potentially at-risk. Over the past twenty years, the spread of screens to every nook of personal space has produced nothing less than a new geometry and luminosity of personal space (the crooked elbow, the hunched neck, the glow). Accompanying this new configuration of people, things and lights, are corresponding harms, fears, and tools for preventing and warding off harm.

We are accustomed to thinking about media and their effects: we talk about the effect of media content on unsuspecting or vulnerable audiences; we talk about the physically damaging effects of too much or the wrong kind of exposure—hearing damage from concerts, queasiness from 3D movies, repetitive strain injuries from keyboard use. And we often try to position our bodies in relation to media technologies, and away from their harms.

My argument is that we are also re-positioned, constantly, towards technologies that prevent harms. These intermediaries—prophylactics—structure our space (are you at a standing desk?) and our time (will you sleep better if you read on an orange screen?). Increasingly, the site of prophylaxis is also the site of potential harm. A driving app that won’t let you type when your GPS coordinates indicate you are in a car—until you affirmatively tell it you are a passenger—unites the source of potential tragedy (distracted driving) with its very own mitigation. By thinking through the arrangement of people and things as an orientation towards prophylaxis—and not just an aversion to harm–what do we learn about compulsory technology use? What does the conspicuous prevention of harm tell us about the legibility of pain and suffering?

New prophylactics can also be the entry point for addressing the uneven distribution of harm. Ultimately, this is what I think is most important about night modes. Chronic sleep loss and fatigue are unevenly distributed problems. Those with the flexibility to control when and for how long they sleep also tend to be those with other forms of power, prestige, and control over their work environments. Night modes are just one artifact of renewed focus on a widespread social phenomenon. In essence, these new device settings individualize the responsibility to control one’s exposure to light, while simultaneously highlighting the fact that very few people have the freedom to completely switch off.

I began this project when I arrived at Microsoft Research in July 2016 and it benefitted immeasurably from the input of the Social Media Collective and our many guests. These guests include: Cait McKinney, Sharif Mowlabocus, Joan Donovan, Amy Hasinoff, Jonathan Sterne, Nick Couldry, Meryl Alper and the participants of our workshop on Disability Studies and Technology.